Lucy Hutchinson's Translation of Lucretius: De Rerun Natura

Lucy Hutchinson, born in 1630, was the daughter of Lucy St. John and Sir Allen Apsley, James I's Lieutenant of the Tower of London. In a time when the education of women was of little concern, Hutchinson was fortunate to have parents who saw to it that from an early age she had a good education, including French and Latin. She undertook her translation of Lucretius' poem De Rerum Natura in the 1650s: it was the first English translation of the poem by a woman, and possibly the first in English as well. Hutchinson's translation well represents the complex world view of the Roman philosopher Lucretius, and his curiously modern understanding of atoms and their role in science and nature.Hugh de Quehen's engaging volume presents Lucy Hutchinson's translation, together with considerable information on Hutchinson herself and on Lucretius, as well as a brief commentary on the intellectual and social climate of seventeenth-century England. He also presents a bibliography of the editions of Lucretius, published translations of Lucretius, writings of Hutchinson and her contemporaries, and later writings on Lucretius and Hutchinson.Lucy Hutchinson's Translation of Lucretius will interest scholars of the classical tradition and of ancient science and philosophy, as well as those interested in English literary and history.